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Understanding consumers’ intentions to purchase green products in the social media marketing context

Ying Sun (School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China)
Shanyong Wang (University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China)

Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics

ISSN: 1355-5855

Article publication date: 25 November 2019

Issue publication date: 21 April 2020

15484

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to observe consumers’ attitudes toward and intentions to purchase green products on social media and to explore the relationships among social media marketing, perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE), product knowledge, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, price consciousness and attitudes toward and intentions to purchase green products. In addition, this research attempts to further understand these relationships in different consumer groups.

Design/methodology/approach

A questionnaire survey method was used to collect data from consumers in China. The Amos 22.0 software package was used to conduct the data analysis.

Findings

The empirical results suggest that attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control positively affect purchase intentions, while price consciousness negatively affects purchase intentions. Product knowledge positively affects consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions, and PCE positively affects consumers’ attitudes. As expected, social media marketing positively affects subjective norms, product knowledge and PCE and negatively affects price consciousness. However, there is no significant relationship between PCE and purchase intentions. According to the results of multigroup structural equation modeling analysis, the effects differ significantly among different consumer groups.

Originality/value

This study enriches the research about the factors that influence consumers’ purchases of green products in emerging countries in the social media marketing context.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number 71974177).

Citation

Sun, Y. and Wang, S. (2020), "Understanding consumers’ intentions to purchase green products in the social media marketing context", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 32 No. 4, pp. 860-878. https://doi.org/10.1108/APJML-03-2019-0178

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

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